


Anamnesis

by o2doko



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Fantasy, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o2doko/pseuds/o2doko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Anamnesis' is a Steampunk novel-in-progress about a Victorian-esque clockwork kingdom set in a fancifully re-imagined American West. Its inhabitants are clever and resourceful, and have compensated for the lack of natural resources by using clockwork mechanisms. This solution is not without a price, however; to become a citizen of Clarior, one most donate a part of oneself - literally. The lucky lose bones or blood; the unlucky, entire organs. Whatever the City takes, it replaces with a clockwork mechanism powered directly by the clock tower at the heart of the kingdom. It is a method of self-preservation. Those bound to the clock require it to survive, and thus will do anything to protect it.  They are literally part of the City, and the City is literally a part of them.</p>
<p>A recent coup attempt has left General Tren Tardor quite literally broken, more machine now than man, and has scattered his precious memories all over the City. Something went wrong the day the king was overthrown; something which has resulted in the disruption of the City’s time. The clock is winding down, and only Tren knows how to fix it - if he could only remember …</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 'Anamnesis' is very much a work-in-progress, liable to expansion and alteration at any time. I am posting it here in draft form in the hopes of drumming up interest for the novel and soliciting feedback from readers - comments, questions, and criticisms are very much needed and immensely appreciated! Feel free to comment here, or to email me at: clockwork.kingdoms@gmail.com. 
> 
> Don't miss a chapter update! Follow Anamnesis on Twitter (@russettedbones), Facebook (www.facebook.com/clockwork.kingdoms), and Tumblr (clockwork-kingdoms.tumblr.com). 
> 
> With gratitude,  
> C (o2doko)

_Odyssey on odyssey and land over land_  
Creeping and crawling like the sea over sand  
Still I follow the heartlines on your hand  
This fantasy, this fallacy, this tumbling stone  
Echoes of a city that's long overgrown  
Your heart is the only place that I call home. 

_Florence + the Machine – Heartlines_  
  
  
  


He had worn boots all his life, but he had never paid much attention to them before: their weight, their suppleness, the bite of their soles into the earth. But he was aware of them now. He could hear the rhythmic creak of leather as he placed one foot in front of the other. He could feel the pull of the laces against his calf as his weight momentarily shifted and resettled, and he could hear the metal teeth of the buckles chiming quietly against their frames.

It all made him intensely, uncomfortably aware of the deafening silence around them, and how his companion's footsteps made absolutely no sound at all.

It was the sort of observation which normally warranted an irritable comment from him, but to speak then would be an unforgivable breach of sacred tradition. No one spoke at all – that was the point. Silence was never darker or more profound than when it was attended by thousands of terse, expectant faces, and in the pre-dawn gloaming it was strong enough to cast shadows of its own.

Not even the babies cried. They were there, of course, along with every other citizen of the City, whey-faced and clinging to their mothers. But their eyes were like the rest: dry and watching. In all the years that he had done this, that had always struck him as the strangest part.

Not that the rest of it wasn’t surreal.

He could smell the dust of the parched earth as they continued, side-by-side, along the crowded, silent street, the acrid scent mingling with the aroma of rusting metal and crushed flowers as men and women tossed bouquets of autumn-withered blooms at their feet. “Like a funeral procession,” the knight had commented grimly after his first Journey. But the king doubted it phased him much now. He had never managed to get used to it all himself, though. The scent of decay gave him vertigo, and behind his scarlet and gold mask his eyes were too focused and apprehensive. 

The knight's solid shoulder occasionally pressed into his while they walked. The crowd had pressed them close enough together that it could have been accidental, but the king suspected that it was not, and he was grateful for that, too. The warmth he could feel between the twin layers of their uniform jackets grounded him in the frigid dark.

When at last they reached the end of the street, the two men paused at the City gates and turned to look back over the watching crowd. These gates, as heavily ornamented as the king's mask, were meant to keep the darkness at bay and were only opened one time a year. There was no fence: only the massive, rusting portal. The trees planted to either side of the structure, grown into powerful oaks over the course of the years, licked the copper and iron with the tips of their blood-red leaves. Their branches were woven in and out of the intricately wrought iron, old but strong, as though the gate had grown up between their limbs instead of the other way around – the never-ending battle between nature and machine that marked his reign. In the quiet and the stillness he could hear the whisper generated by their tortured caresses, soft and hollow as a prayer at the end of the world.

The king glanced briefly at the knight at his side, wondering if he heard it as well, but as always the other man's copper-green eyes were unfathomable and calm and focused straight ahead. _I am the spectacle_ , the king thought as he looked out over the people one final time. _They have come out to see me pass from hope into the dark. But they draw their courage from him._

Drawing in a deep, steadying breath, the king raised a gloved hand in silent salute as the knight rested his own leather-clad fingers over the hilt of his sword. The king could see the shuttered face of his brother-in-law at the top of the armory stairs, standing silently beside the pale waif of his sister. For once, the older man's face was devoid of all hostility. He had made this Journey, too, a different knight alongside a different king, a lifetime ago. Careful not to meet the monarch's eyes, the two joined the rest of the assembled throng in raising their hands – _Go now in peace_ – as was customary at the sending off of an already departed soul. The two travelers turned towards the gate once more. 

There was no lock, and there was no key. Neither of them made any move to touch the weathered iron, but it swung open anyway. It belonged to the City, not to them, and the City was beckoning them forward. The shriek of its rusted hinges, older than they were and full of mourning, made even the knight shudder.

They did not look at one another, and the reassuring press of the knight's shoulder was gone as he fell back the traditional step behind his lord and master. Together they were alone as they ducked through the twisted archway.

Silent this time, the gate swung closed behind them as the crowd turned its back on the pair and, just as silently, began to walk away without looking back. There were special Darkling cakes waiting for them at home, cakes and warm, spiced cider to accompany their speculations and nervous laughter, but not for the departed.

For the travelers, there was nothing but the end of the road, and the Journey which lay beyond it.

 

_When he was a boy, the promise of an oncoming storm was a little like a holiday. He would loosen the knots and buckles and fastenings of his dusty, hand-me-down clothes to let the cooling air in, and then he would stretch his lean, tan body out on the little cot in the bedroom they all shared with his eyes closed – listening with every single atom of his being, and waiting._

_The sound of the first, soft patterings was like a cool, sweet kiss against his dry skin. His entire body broke out into gooseflesh at the music of it, and he’d open his eyes wide to watch the shadows from the small window begin to drip down his arms._

(The first time they were together, it was like that; and when he licked the sliding rainshadows clean of his lover’s collarbone, salt-sweet as the sea, it felt exactly the same as when he’d watched the dusky fingerprints of forgotten storms caress his sun-scorched skin. The thunder was in his blood and in his bones as surely as it was in the sky, and it was the closest to worship he’d ever come.)

_Light, spring rains left tattoos; the vicious summer storms, scars. The shadows impressed their shapes deep inside the secret, silent memories of his muscles, where they continued to exist long after the night had blurred away the rune-like markings on his skin._

_He thinks they might be visible now._

_There isn’t much that he can feel, and even less that he can place. But each time the distant agony forces him back into consciousness, he is aware of the moisture dripping down onto his face from above – not sweet at all, but thick and viscous, and hot as fire, and tasting like copper and blood and failure. This storm will not mark him, he thinks absently; it will strip him to the core._

_And it’s the closest to hell he’ll ever be._

 

There are certain things he remembers about the moment, and certain things he does not – the same way that true stories, repeated often enough, become fiction. He knows that it was sunset, because the colors have stuck with him over the years: the reds and golds and the russets which hovered somewhere in between, dripping down the walls like fresh blood, painting the metallic gears and chains in the tower with new coats of time-refined rust. Foreshadowing, he thinks now, not without a certain stab of disdainful irony; but he did not think it then. No, then he was only nine years old and awed by the colors, astonished at how they managed to breathe life into the inanimate objects around them and into his father's cold, stern features.

“Put your hand here,” his father commanded him, taking a bruising hold of his thin child's wrist and guiding his spindly fingers to where the uncoiling mainspring thrummed and shivered. (This is one of the parts that he is less certain about, though it feels right – nothing gentle, and everything sluggish with significance.) He does not recall whether he noticed that the massive clock was ticking exactly in time with his own heartbeat, or whether his father had to point it out to him. Either way, it was true then and it is still true now. The heartbeat of the City is and always was his own heartbeat, as it always would be. 

“You will guard this City with your life, because it is your life; and you will guard this clock with your life because it is the City's heart, which is your heart. It cannot survive without you. You cannot survive without it. Do you understand?”

The boy did not, of course; he was only nine years old, still awed by the colors and the uncharacteristic light of fervor burning between the spinning gears in his father's cold irises. The man who had always been entirely bereft of emotion was still holding tight to his son's wrist as though it was a lifeline, and somewhere between the press of his father's war-calloused fingers and the hollow of his wrist bone he could feel the man's hammer-steady pulse, too, ticking away in time with his son's and with the clock and with the sum of all things that breathed and shuddered beneath that gold, bloody sky.

There was strength in that harmony, strength and a sort of aching fear which cut deep into him on the back swing of every _tick_ , even then. He remembers that much, at least. It was an all-too vivid recollection as he turned from the scarlet-hued walls and looked down into the wide eyes of his nine year old son, the child's face pale with expectation.

“Put your hand here,” he commanded the boy, taking a bruising hold of his child's thin wrist and guiding his spindly fingers to where the uncoiling mainspring thrummed and shivered. The massive clock was ticking exactly in time with his own heartbeat, as true then as it had been before.

“You will guard this City with your life, because it is your life; and you will guard this clock with your life because it is the City's heart, which is your heart. It cannot survive without you. You cannot survive without it. Do you understand?”

He did not, of course; he was only nine years old, still awed by the colors and the uncharacteristic light of fervor burning between the spinning gears in his father's cold irises. The man who had too often behaved as though he was entirely bereft of emotion was still holding tight to his son's wrist as though it was a lifeline, and somewhere between the press of his war-calloused fingers and the hollow of the boy's wrist bone he knew the child could feel his hammer-steady pulse, ticking away in time with his and with the clock and with the sum of all things that breathed and shuddered between that gold, bloody sky.

There was a strength in that harmony still, strength and a sort of aching fear which cut deep into him on the forward swing of every _tock_ – even then. That pain has only intensified with time, though it is a special agony reserved for certain occasions: on his coronation day, when he surrendered himself to a fate he did not want; on the day he pressed his shaking hand above the irregular, defiant heart he loved and told its owner that the City demanded its sacrifice; in the moment he first held his newborn son in his arms and realized that they were standing in the shadow of the clock tower already, always; on the day of the boy's ninth birthday, when he brought him to meet the agent of his success and the harbinger of his doom.

On the day he turned from the scarlet-hued walls, the light dripping down the stones along with the fresh blood, and looked down into the empty eyes of his son, the child's face pale with unrealized expectations.

It is hard to differentiate between all the memories now. The mind is elusive that way. All the happiness and dread and fear and exhilaration in his life have begun to bleed together and overlap, setting all the circular moments of his preordained existence spinning painfully in his tired head. All his emotions have been inherited, the crown jewels passed down between generations: his joys were his grandfather's, his fears simply echoes of his sire's.

And as he stands here now, the setting sun tipping the ends of his gold hair the color of fresh blood, he thinks wearily that only one fear belongs to him alone, and it is crashing around his aching chest like a tidal wave: the one moment no one predicted, or experienced, or expected. The one moment that was not supposed to happen.

 

Standing just beyond the shadow of the tower, feeling each labored second in his breaking heart, he knows that he is about to watch the clock stop ticking.

For all time.

In the stories associated with his youth, ghost were tangible things. They occupied space, usually space they were not meant to occupy, and became visible to torment the wrong-doers in the world: the murderers and the grave robbers and, in his case, the children who refused to go to bed when they were told and went climbing out on the roof instead. These specters usually wore white and carried chains, and – assuming they spoke at all – they delivered their fearful condemnations in low, wavering tones.

Children were still told stories like that during the Darkling Days. He had overheard his son discussing one just days before. But those old tales confused him now, because ghosts were not anything like that at all. This one in particular had been following him since he'd emerged from the Main Street station over an hour ago.

It was not unusual to see ghosts during the Darkling Days. They may not have carried chains the way the ghosts in the stories did, but they often rode in on one – denizens of the Dead City caught like leaves in the main spring as the great clock began to wind down. It dragged them past borders they would not normally have dared to cross, and tangled them up in the gears and cogs of everyday life again. It was a fleeting, if unsettling, phenomenon; the specters would linger in the City a fortnight or so until the Rending, when the clock would be rewound and the dragging chain would pull them home again.

But this was different. The Rending had come and gone, but this year the ghosts still lingered. And this one had gone from being a disconcerting blur in the corner of his eye to an almost fully-formed image, real enough now to follow him silently through the crowded streets. The people around him could see it, too, though they gave it a wide berth. That was what you were supposed to do with the Darklings. Everyone knew that acknowledging a thing made it real.

Besides, the citizens of Clarior were already shell-shocked enough as it was. They had absorbed it as best they could: the bakery was open, the newspapers had gone to print, women were still hanging out their laundry and gossiping on the street corners. But the entire City was dressed in the black clothes of mourning, and the rotting pumpkins and tattered crepe ribbons were still on display. No one seemed entirely sure what to do with them now that their protective charms had proven futile.

And, of course, there were the ghosts.

He saw one lingering by a news stand, head tilted to the side as it frowned at the late edition of a local paper. He saw one on the outdoor terrace of a cafe, poking its translucent finger into the tea cup of a patron who was heroically pretending not to notice.

He did his best to ignore them, too, and turned up the collar of his old army coat against the autumn chill. A bit of a defiant fashion choice, that; it alternatively earned him nods of respect and sharp glares of disapproval. Had he had the option, he would have chosen something else to wear – but he was a beggar now, and beggars could not be choosers.

The scent threaded permanently through the worn-soft fibers, a mixture of coffee grounds and woodsmoke and skin, was both a comfort and a torment. In all the days since, he had not been able to bring himself to put his hands in any of the many assorted pockets, terrified that what he'd find there might shatter his already wavering resolve.

But the ghost had no similar reservations.

As he stopped on the street corner to wait for a rattling tramcar to pass, the ghost stopped beside him. It was impossible not to notice it then. It smelled of wet, dark earth and wore a uniform that he did not recognize, moth-eaten and dry rotted and a particular color that could only be called 'decay.' When the creature turned its head towards him, the lit street lamps, mere fireflies now this early in the dusk, were still powerful enough to reflect on the brass half-mask welded directly into its exposed skull. The phantom had no eyes, but he could sense that it was watching him.

The closer the calendar crept towards the Rending, the stronger the ghosts became. They could move things, sometimes, though nothing heavy or for very far. But he had never known one substantial enough to grab his wrist and force something into his hand the way this one did now.

It was a gear about half the size of his palm and coated in flaking bits of rust. (No, he would realize later, not rust; blood.) “What -?” he began, forgetting himself in his confusion and looking directly into the leering skull's empty eye sockets. The chill that flooded him then was cold enough to hurt, but he did not look away.

The ghost was unperturbed, reaching past his arm to dip its rotting fingers into the right-side pocket of his coat. It withdrew a piece of folded paper, worn soft with age and repeated creasing, and pressed that into his hand, too.

The missive bore his own handwriting in faded ink, the letters overlapped by a steady if hesitant hand in graphite. Time had smeared most of the words into incomprehension, but three remained visible still, the two handwritings tangled together around the letters: come find me.

He looked up with a startled inhalation, but the ghost had abruptly vanished.

All that remained was the silver tendrils of his startled breath in the gathering dark, just as frail and just as quickly gone in the glow of the gaslights overhead.

 

Finding the back-alley shop proved more difficult than he had been anticipating. Navigating the City could be a challenge even during the best of times, and these were hardly that. But his uncanny sense of direction appeared to be failing him. The City wore a new face now, and it wasn’t one he recognized.

_Ansia's city_ , he thought darkly, giving the cuffs of his jacket sleeves a self-conscious tug over his cold, scarred hands. They were healing, now just one more injury to ache during troubled weather. But they were the very least of what he had to forgive.

There was a small brass bell which chimed, cheery and sparrow-like, above the door when he finally located it. It was rather at odds with the man seated at the front desk, though, somber and cradling a wicked-looking rifle across his lap. He had his booted feet up on the desk and his covered head bowed in an attitude of sleep, the brim of his hat concealing most of his face. He looked up when he heard the bell ring, focusing both eyes – one normal, one mechanical – on the newcomer. The sight of the old army jacket elicited a scowl from the man's weather-hammered features, so the newcomer held up his hands in a universal gesture of peace and supplication. “I am looking for Mr. Hivern,” he explained quietly. “I have a job that needs doing, and I understand that he's the man for it.”

“He ain't here.” The gunman spat a cheekful of tobacco juice into the corner of the room and readjusted his hold on his rifle. “Been outa town awhile. No idea when he's comin' back.” There was a touch of annoyed bitterness in his tone.

“Perhaps you can help me, then,” the visitor countered smoothly. False; he needed Hivern's particular skills. But maybe if he could make a proposal interesting enough to -

His train of thought was abruptly derailed by the shifting of the gears inside his head; an unusual sensation just shy of pain as the mechanism reversed direction. The gunmen winced and rubbed at his mechanical eye. Clearly he felt it, too. It was known colloquially as ‘the Switch’, and it happened whenever the City changed something.

A door banged open overhead, followed abruptly by the clatter of annoyed footsteps on the wooden stairs. “That's it! I can't stand it anymore, Tercer!” A second door, this time along the back wall behind the gunmen’s desk, was suddenly wrenched wide and a flustered young woman emerged. She was darker than either man, with sooth brown skin and curly black hair and almond-colored eyes, dressed rather thoughtlessly and scandalously in brown trousers and a shirt at least two sizes too large for her, the long sleeves rolled up to reveal her well-toned forearms. She was also quite pretty, though those observations would occur to the visitor later; for the moment, he was mostly distracted by the colorful riot of feathers stuck haphazardly through her hair.

The girl’s livid, flashing eyes passed over him briefly and without interest, unconcerned with his identity or his business in the wake of her own problems. “An aviary, Tercer!” she spat angrily to the gunmen, plucking a molted yellow feather out of the nest of her dark ringlets. “Why does an attic workshop keep insisting that it is an aviary?! This is the third time in as many days!”

Tercer gave her a meaningful look with his stoic grey eye, indicating the visitor where he still stood by the door, but she would not be dismissed so easily. “Five hours!” she cried insistently, gesturing towards the stairs with an arm which was entirely mechanical. “That is how long I spent getting sand out of the damned carburetor to his damned horse. Would you like to guess what that carburetor has just turned into?” The look Tercer shot her now was a touch helpless. He had risen in response to the commotion upstairs, and now towered over the girl by a good foot and a half, broad-shouldered and scarred, and yet it was obvious that he had absolutely no idea how to handle her rage.

“It is now a birdcage,” she continued without waiting for a response, throwing her small hands into the air. “A birdcage! Complete with a little yellow bird that has the gall to hop around and whistle at me! Of course, the cursed sand is still there, though – it fell through the bars of the cage during the transformation and is currently spilled all over my workshop floor!”

“Ocell, we'll discuss this later, alright? I'm kinda busy right now with a customer -”

Ocell waved her mechanical arm again to cut him off. “What about my customers, then? I have got a broken train mechanism up there that needs fixed, and two jammed handguns, and guess what? All three are now operating – or not operating, actually – under the delusion that they are birdcages! What am I supposed to tell their owners when they come to retrieve them? Seeing as how I'm the only one actually making rent at the moment -”

“We'll come up with the rent money,” Tercer interjected quickly.

“Forget the rent money, I want to move!”

“How are we supposed to do that when we're broke?”

“I thought you just said -”

“People, please,” the visitor cut in smoothly, in the sort of quiet voice which carried great weight across great distances. They were both looking at him now – the woman with defiant expectation, the man with annoyed confusion – and so he very deliberately reached into one of the inner pockets of his coat and removed the object he had hidden there. The metal was warm with his body heat and, as always, felt far too heavy for its size. That was what he noticed as he set it carefully on the cluttered, battered desk. What they noticed was the robin's egg-sized ruby glinting at the center of the solid gold broach, a bright crimson circle in the middle of an intricately wrought sun.

“I believe that I might be able to assist you with your financial concerns,” he finished in the same quiet, commanding tone. “Should you be willing to listen to my proposal, of course.”

Not surprisingly, they were.

. . . . . . . . 

The City's streets were quiet now, in part due to the deepening hours but mostly because of the storm. The umber edges of the sun-seared desert, brittle like leaves and starved for rain, lay not ten miles south of where the snow now gathered, but no one thought that strange. The great Northern Express had thundered into the port station that afternoon, refugees packed shoulder-to-shoulder in every cargo car. The streets practically hummed with the bittersweet memories of the homes they had left behind. The storm belonged to them, and now it cluttered the streets like baggage they no longer had the strength to carry.

The white powder had begun to drift along the sidewalks, deadening the footfalls of the brave few still willing to risk the hauntings and the hostile weather. The ghosts themselves didn’t seem to know what to do with it all; weightless and boneless, they drifted with the swirling wind, occasionally fetching up against windows and lamp posts and the rusting grates which lead down to the sewers. He ignored them as he had before, walking steadily down the center of the gear-cobbled street. The steam of the departed trollies lingered in the sizzle of every frost-tipped kiss of moisture, keeping the stones mostly clear of the storm’s smudged footprints, and he went on unchallenged until he reached the little café. 

The man shoved his numb hands deeper into the pockets of the worn army coat, grimly braving their detritus now as fraying cuffs caught on keys and loose change. Then his eyes, such a sharp, cutting blue in the grey twilight, lifted to gaze into the shadowed depths of the building’s third story windows.

And the building met him stare for stare. Its glassy gaze took the measure of him, white-rimmed and peeling (the windows, too) with the gas lamp glimmer it mirrored back and through him. After a pause, it moaned softly in acquiescence (or was that only the wind?) and then its old gears began to turn.

The teeth-and-groove seam splitting the plaster down its center became suddenly visible as the old building shook off the dust of its current identity. The cogs turned and clicked and the bricks twisted like the rotating squares of a puzzle-box, slowly at first until they worked up some speed. The men and women sipping tea and hot chocolate in the cafe suddenly found themselves sipping beer in a tavern – watching a show in a dance hall – reading books in a library – as the building's clockwork parts circled through all the memories of what it had once been.

No one commented or complained. They all knew about the refugees. New faces in the neighborhood meant that things were bound to change.

Finally, the shifting components settled on the inn they had comprised during his youth, right down to the stone facade and the window planters with their riot of colorful flowers, now pale and shivering in the driving snow. The windows themselves, however, remained as they had always been: shadowed and depthless and watching.

But he no longer had any use for them. He moved forward into the alley sheltered against the inn's hulking side, a narrow space which first the tavern and then the cafe had encroached upon, but which was there now. He slipped through its dark recesses without hesitation, knowing it would not be there again after he had gone.

It was the shortcut he was after. Eventually, the mouth of the side street deposited him out of the labyrinthine back alley passages, a tangled web of soot-smeared brick and rusting fire escapes and fluttering wash freezing in the unexpected storm, and into the courtyard at the heart of the City.

The massive clock tower looming at its epicenter advised him that he was right on time, but he could hardly have been anything else.

Still, he had been racing against the dying twilight. The storm had greyed it, true, but it was still light enough to fade, and in its absence even his eyes would not be good enough to see what he had come to find. His visit to the shop had been a necessary detour, but he could not risk any further delays.

Head bowed, his heavy, salt-licked boots began to carry him the width of the courtyard. The iron lion at the base of the tower was watching him, but he avoided its accusing glare. It must have been here – but no. Perhaps, then, over here - ? But nothing. In desperation, his gaze finally lifted to the massive clock face, squinting against the snow rapidly dissolving into a cold, bitter rain. “Where?” he growled softly, voice hoarse from grief and exhaustion or maybe just from the cold. “Then where?”

The sky replied with a sudden, wildcat snarl of thunder that curled around each iron tooth in the lion's open jaws, the sound both judgmental and warning. He dropped his eyes to the cobbled gears again and trudged forward in the freezing rain, breath smoking silver in the gathering dark. The lank strands of his golden hair fell in frozen ropes around his unshaven face; he could no longer feel the toes which stubbed against the steel tips of his boots. Hunger gnawed at his insides like a wild, savage thing, and every ticked-off second echoing above him felt like a hammer blow against his tired, brittle bones. He had to hurry. He was running out of time.

Had it not been for the sudden flash of lightening, he would not have seen it, and had he missed it in this first pass, the driving rain would have stolen it from him altogether. Diluted in the deluge, the halo of blood had become pink in hue. The shape was already blurred, tendrils leaking into the cracks between the pavement and trickling towards the gutters, but his eyes knew it for what it was.

Twelve. The stranger had said twelve.

He hit his knees without hesitation, ignoring the shock of cold water as it bled upward into the fabric of his trousers. Pale fingers left the relative safety of his pockets and crammed themselves into the cracks instead, blindly groping for the promised pieces of metal. What if the storm had already swept them away? What if someone else had already found them? What if he had guessed wrong? What if –

No. No, they were here. He almost sobbed in relief when the teeth of the first bit into the chapped pad of his index finger. The second was glossed with mud, but still unmistakable; the third was rusted with blood, like the one the ghost had pressed into his hands mere hours ago. One by one, they emerged from the safe, secret places between the stones, scattered wide around the vanishing crimson circle. He cradled them in his hand like precious gems, letting them cut into the raw skin of his scraped palm to reassure himself that they were really there.

When he pried the twelfth gear free, he did cry, hot tears mixing with cold rain beneath the lion's passive stare.

“Can you hear me?” he whispered raggedly, raising the fistful of metal to his cut, swollen lips.

“I am coming for you. I am coming.”

 

The knight slowly lifted his head.

He could feel her fingers inside his heart, the heat of her wrist where it brushed against the bone of his third rib with every turn: one, two, three. The winding gears tightened something inside his chest, opening his lungs and opening his eyes. It was the same room as always. Same shadows, same Spartan furniture, same cobwebs lingering in the high corners of the ceiling. He alone was different.

Ansia stepped back, the key dangling now from the slender gold chain threaded between her fingers. The hatch between his shoulder blades was still open, the rust-colored exterior of his softly whirring heart visible between the white curves of his ribs. She stared at it a moment in rapt, horrified fascination, watching the little pistons pumping blood and oil into his corded veins. “Can you hear me, Tren?” she asked softly.

“I was dreaming,” he answered after a long, pregnant pause, in a voice which had been systematically stripped of all emotion and inflection until it wasn't really a voice at all.

“About what?” The hatch closed with a reassuring click, hiding gears and bones behind a small, rectangular square of metal set into his skin. The skin itself was purple yet, bruised and swollen, but its many hurts were mending. He was resilient. Far more resilient than she had ever given him credit for.

“There was an army in a field – a desert,” he murmured in the same listless monotone. His green eyes lifted from the floorboards as she came around to face him. “And there was a man – a man -”

“Only a dream.”

He said nothing in response, though his scarred lips worked soundlessly behind the leather mask encasing his head: a precaution to hold his shattered skull in place. 

“You must dress.” Ansia pointed to where his shirt and jacket lay draped over the back of the room's single chair. “There is much pertaining to the castle which requires your attention.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“I will send in a servant to assist you.”

“That will not be necessary, my lady.”

She studied him a moment longer, noting the jagged scars stripping his bare chest, the bars of shadow and the shadows of raindrops scrawled like tribal tattoos across his masticated flesh – thrown through the window and into him by the gas lamps outside. 'My lady,' he called her now. Not 'domina'; not like before. “You do not recall what happened, then?”

The fingers resting on his black-clad knees rippled, metallic joints clicking through the leather of his gloves: the soundtrack of his scattered thoughts as he struggled to marshal them into order again. She waited until he raised his masked face once more and sought hers out within the poorly-lit darkness. Though his battered body was some cobbled-together monstrosity of corpse and machine, those eyes were exactly the same as they had always been: still impossibly human, still painfully piercing. His scarred lips worked again, still learning, remembering, how to form words around a tongue and a set of teeth which were no longer entirely his. “Oh, yes,” he managed finally – flatly:

“I fell.”


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plot-hatching and breaking-and-entering. In which some men die, some men live, and some continue to drift aimlessly somewhere in the middle.

Only the leaves were blood-colored this time, though that was about to change.

From where he stood, he could not help but feel that the sky and the earth had somehow become inverted. All the ashen, sorrowful hues of storm and thunder had congregated in ebony silks and scarlet ribbons below, while the sky above maintained its perfect, oceanic blue. The feeling of being underwater was appropriate, at least. The air was too thick, and everything was moving too slowly.

He had arrived late on purpose and now had to stand on the top steps of the bank's entrance way in order to see anything above the enormous crowd milling in the courtyard. Eleven figures stood on the wooden slats of the recently-erected platform. Four of them were dressed in black: two in mourning, all in duty. The remaining seven wore the scarlet red of the King's Guard. Seven braided nooses hung in the tense air just beyond their frozen expressions, taunting their efforts at remaining calm. His eyes trailed along the length of the wooden bar supporting them, following the belts and gears and loops which connected the scaffolding with the great clock tower at the center of the courtyard. Poetic, certainly, if perhaps a bit overdone; the City itself would be their executioner, pulling the earth out from under them as it ticked away the final minute of their lives.

They were the king's men, all seven of them. But the king was dead and someone needed to take the fall.

And then the lovely young queen herself stepped forward to the edge of the platform and raised her blacked-gloved hands above her head for silence. The crowd gave it to her without protest. They had never been entirely sold on their foreign lady, but none would deny she cut an imposing figure: tall, slender, taller still now all in black. Her dark chestnut hair was pulled back in a tight bun, accentuating the severe lines of her sharply beautiful face, and her voice was strong and clear when it finally spilled out across the courtyard.

“Citizens!” she cried, lace-covered wrists tilting in imprecation of the very heavens. The man smiled in spite of himself, recognizing her theatricality. _Smart, Ansia. Always entirely too smart._ “It has been but a week since the passing of my beloved husband, and your most honored lord. Your grief has been my grief, and your anger has been my rage! These seven conspirators, like vipers within your lord's very home, rose up in rebellion against the king and the very City itself – snatching your monarch from you in the prime of his life, and very nearly destroying the young prince along with him!” His eyes shifted along with everyone else's to the small figure standing behind her. The boy's pale blonde hair was an unexpected shock of color against the black of his clothing and the black uniform of the knight who stood protectively behind him. Tren's gloved hands rested on the prince's shoulders, the brim of his hat working with the upturned collar of his coat to conceal his masked face. The little prince shrank back against Tren's legs in answer to their scrutiny, unnerved by the sudden wave of unwanted attention.

“I have sworn to avenge this heinous outrage,” Ansia continued in a voice like thunder, “and so this afternoon, I shall! For my husband – for the City, and for you! - these seven men will die at the stroke of one. May their blood erase the stains of the blood they shed!”

As if on some unspoken cue, Lleil, the dark-haired queen's knight, came forward from her back corner of the platform to slip the nooses over the heads of the condemned, one by one. _It should have been you,_ the man thought, staring hard at Tren again. _They were your men._ But the steward of the palace did not even look at them. He did not appear to be looking at anyone; all his attention, if attention it was, seemed to be fixated on the child held in place beneath his heavy hands.

There is sometimes action in inaction, though; and judging by the murmurs eddying around him, the people took Tren's total lack of interest in the proceedings as a sign of his consent. They did not trust Ansia. Many of them did not even trust the High Court of the City. But Tren was their hero, and always had been. He did not speak out now against these executions, and for them that was proof enough of the men's guilt.

Leil stepped back again, each noose in place. The prisoners seemed less certain in their bravery now. Miratge watched as the man at the far end of the line nervously wet his lips and struggled to crane his head upward to catch a glimpse of the clock. Only a minute to go. The three drummers lined up below the platform began their ominous roll.  
The hatred of the crowd was an almost palpable force, seething in the tightly packed square and surging, invisible but still potent, towards the edge of the stage. He could almost see it lick the toes of their boots – boots which, in a matter of seconds, would never walk the ground again.  
He could not watch the involuntary reflexes of their bodies disgrace the honor they had exhibited in life, and so he found himself staring at Tren instead. The chime of the clock tower screamed overhead like a creature wounded; as one, those in the square shuddered, held their breath; Tren lifted his head and those intense, penetrating eyes cut through the swathe of anticipation and found him – but only for a moment. 

_Only a moment._

The cord binding the clock to the gallows snapped in a sudden whisper of slithering rope. The gears did not turn; the belts did not move; the false bottom did not drop. The men did not die.

The City would not be their executioner, after all.

Miratge smiled, grim and satisfied, but he had paid his dues. He would not wait around to see the cord re-threaded, nor to watch Lleil tug the more mundane trigger. He had seen enough.

Besides, he had an appointment to keep.

. . . . . . . . . .

“This is home, I guess. Feel free to make yourself comfortable.” Ocell shot him a side-long glance as she turned up the gas lamp on the table, which did little to illuminate the unusual space. Some combination of the aviary incident and the need for privacy had made them decide to meet out here this time, in the little junk yard on the outskirts of the City: a place where people rarely went and things rarely changed without warning. It was Ocell's personal space, a construction of her own design, and while she didn't seem to mind Tercer moving grumpily about the property it was obvious that she wasn't entirely comfortable with having their visitor there.

The building wasn’t large, and in keeping with Ocell's rather quirky personality there weren't so much 'rooms' inside as there were places to perch upon: ladders which didn't really lead anywhere, window seats which lacked actual windows, shelves large enough to sit upon, provided they weren't already claimed by miscellaneous clutter. A bit eccentric, perhaps, but a far cry better than the volatile workshop-turned-aviary had been.

Now that she was free of the place, Ocell seemed to have found the humor in the situation. She had brought along the birdcage that had once been a horse carburetor, complete with its little brass bird, and already seemed to be planning how best to surprise the third member of their group with it when he returned to claim his repaired mount. The cage was currently hanging on a hook near the door, its little occupant overseeing the late afternoon's proceedings with its sporadic, cheerful trilling.

The visitor, who had finally introduced himself as ‘Miratge’ sometime after he’d arrived, settled into one of the four wooden chairs gathered around the wooden table (a safety precaution; wooden beds had recently come back into fashion because they lacked gears and rotating metal parts – the very things the City required to make a change. There were few things less pleasant than waking up trapped inside a metal box, a miniature airship, or something more horrifyingly inventive.)

After some deliberation which seemed to hinge on his conflicting desires to protect and to nest, Tercer, who was a sniper by training, had finally decided to risk climbing up one of the ladders and perching on the ledge above it, where he could keep a somewhat sullen eye on them while polishing his gun. Ocell, meanwhile, seemed resigned to the role of spokesperson in their leader's absence and took the chair opposite Miratge's.

No one offered him a drink or anything like it. It wasn't that sort of meeting.

Ocell seemed to feel the same, for she folded her hands together on the scarred surface of the table – real fingers laced in midst her mechanical ones – and leaned forward as soon as she had settled into her seat. “Alright. No sense in delaying the inevitable,” she began, biting her full lower lip a moment in thought as her soft brown eyes looked him over. “Guin's the resident expert on memory extraction, and obviously he is not here, so it's hard for me to promise anything one way or the other. But I have been messing around with machines all my life, and I have to say that I think what you are asking for is impossible.” She glanced up towards the loft, looking for some kind of confirmation from her partner, but he was busy cleaning his gun and didn’t comment. 

“I understand your concerns,” Miratge put in smoothly, silently encouraged by this brief display of uncertainty. The broach, which had been carefully stowed away in his inner coat pocket again, was obviously still a heavy contender in the conversation and, he knew, the reason he hadn't been refused outright. “But I can assure you, it is _not_ impossible. I am not asking you to reinsert the memories like pieces of a complex machine; the City has transformed them into parts already, and _that_ , I agree, is beyond the realm of all possibility. But what I am looking for is a way to recreate the lost memories – create new ones, if you will, that will fit inside the spaces left by the old. The goal here is for the subject to regain knowledge of the information he has lost, so that the larger picture might come into focus for him again. Not unlike a puzzle, if you will. There are pieces missing from the image. Since I cannot physically restore the original pieces, I want to create new pieces that will connect into the same spaces.”

Ocell was still frowning, but this time it was a considering look rather than a skeptical one. “I suppose that is at least theoretically possible,” she allowed slowly, tapping her two thumbs together above her enfolded fingers. “I create new parts for machines all the time. Someone drags in a piece of scrap they have found which is missing something, so I design a new component that will do the same thing as the one that is gone. But … memories are complicated, aren't they? People are not machines. Without knowing absolutely everything about someone, I am not sure we could create a convincing replacement.” 

“We do not have to begin entirely from nothing.” Miratge reached into a different pocket and extracted a folded sheet of paper. He could tell he had caught her interest again as he began to unfold it. Maps, at least, were things that she could understand, and she was young enough to be intrigued by what she thought was impossible. “There is an abandoned hospital in the Western outskirts of the City, built during the time of the tuberculosis epidemic some years ago. Fear of contagion and a renewed outbreak forced the staff to relocate after the epidemic passed, and – uncharacteristically – the City has left the building relatively intact ever since. I was able to obtain this copy of the hospital's floor plan from City Hall.” His scarred hands carefully smoothed the thin paper out over the table's scarred surface, mindful not to smudge the thin, delicate graphite lines delineating the perimeter. Miratge didn't feel the need to elaborate on how he had obtained the plans, and she didn't ask. It had been obvious from the start what sort of clients this self-proclaimed 'fix it' group normally dealt with. In any case, the origins of the map didn't seem to concern her.

“Unusual building,” she mused, tapping a section of the page with one thin finger. “Is this an underground passage? What would a hospital use something like that for?” Miratge was distantly aware that Tercer had paused in working on his guns and was currently leaning over the edge of his loft, staring down at the map, too.

“For clearing out the dead,” he answered shortly.

“Alright. Well, there are certainly plenty of places to hide, at any rate, and it is big enough to stretch out an encounter for as long as necessary. But how is this actually meant to work?”

Miratge reached into his coat one last time and removed a very small, very intricate wooden box. It was a locket, in fact, though it hadn't been wedded with its chain in many years and now served primarily as a complicated little puzzle box. He opened it quickly, the process begun while it was still shielded from her view, an automatic, instinctive urge to protect its secrets. Once fully extended, it was about the size of his palm and contained a little key and twelve small gears, stacked neatly atop one another. “The memories,” he explained as he tilted the bits of worn metal out into his opposite hand. The key he left as it was, fingers closing around the box to tuck it inside the protective, sheltering screen of his palm. “You are, I trust, familiar with Architectural Boxes?” he asked as he tucked the locket back into his pocket and carefully – very carefully – arranged the twelve gears along the white edge of the map.

“Of course I am, though I must confess that I do not understand.” She reached out to lightly touch one with the pad of her finger. “You have the memories? Why were they extracted in the first place, then? If there is something you want from them, can you not just rent a room and play them back like everyone else does?”

“No. They were extracted by accident – by an accident. It was not meant to happen. And it is not the memories which concern me, but rather the information that they trigger in the mind of their owner. Do you understand?”

“No.” She looked up at him, eyes guileless and steady. He found her honestly refreshing. After thinking a moment, Miratge reached out – slowly, so as not to alarm her, though he sensed Tercer tensing up warily above them – and grasped the wrist of her mechanical arm, turning it so that the palm was facing upward. She allowed this, watching without comment, and he pushed the sleeve of her jacket up slightly so that he could tap the little metal hatch which was closed over her wrist. “If I open this and remove one of the gears, will the mechanism continue to function properly?”

“No, it won't. You will have broken the chain; anything after that gear in the line – assuming there is a 'line' at all, technically speaking – will stop spinning.” She was clearly humoring him, but her gaze was steady and patient.

Miratge nodded and released her wrist, settling back in his seat. “Exactly right. Memory isn't so different. If you suddenly forget that you have a brother, for instance, what happens to all of the memories associated with him? Would you be able to accurately recall the time you, say, went fishing with him? What you caught? The attempt you made to cook it for dinner which burned your house to the ground? How many different recollections would no longer make sense to you if you removed a key character from your mind? What if you forgot how to read? How many memories which take the form of text inside your head would you no longer be able to understand? We do not exist in a vacuum. Our past experiences shape us as individuals – but more to the point, our _memories_ of our past experiences shape us. If you remove just one memory, so much has the potential to change. We all know this from our own personal experiences with the City.” He nodded in indication of her arm again. “What did you forget when you donated your flesh and bone? Do you even remember? How different would your life have become if you had lost twelve memories instead of one?” They both looked down at the gears again. “But, because you physically reside in the City, chances are good that you do remember what you lost – because, of course, that is the way it works here. The memories do not disappear. They simply become part of your shared environment, rather than your personal one. You can go and experience your memory any time you like, along with everyone else. So you still possess that memory – but now only as it exists in the collective memory of the City. You were changed when you became an official citizen, but not too much, because you were able to re-experience what you lost in a new context. Yes? But these extracted memories are sitting here on the table. They were never implemented as part of the City's working mechanisms. What I am proposing, really, is just to make them a part – a temporary part – of the infrastructure. Just long enough for their original owner to view them again and gain a new memory of the old one. Does it make sense now?”

“Ye-es,” the girl said slowly, frowning again, “but this brings us back to my original question. Clients ask us to find specific memories all the time for their own personal reasons. They take them to a viewing room and do exactly what you are suggesting – experience them once to benefit from the information there, then remove the gear again and destroy it. I understand that you wish the original owner to experience the memories, not yourself, but why not just take that person to a viewing room and sit them down, make them watch? Would that not be easier than … well, this?” She gestured towards the map of the hospital.

“The situation is complicated,” Miratge said simply. “And the complicated nature of the plan is meant to be a screen of sorts. A diversion. The subject will not necessarily be aware of our intended objective, and the integrity of the memories themselves will remain protected.”

“I suppose that's alright.” The skepticism was back in her voice, but it was a hesitation born from a lack of expertise. The girl was a mechanic; the man, obviously a hired gun. The only person who could give him a clear idea of whether or not this was going to work at all was –

His train of thought was abruptly derailed by a sudden, furious banging on the outside of the front door. They all jumped; it was that loud and that sudden. Both Miratge and Ocell automatically surged to their feet at the sound, and Tercer instantly had the sightlines of a rifle trained on the doorway.

“Damn you and your damned locks!” a hoarse voice howled from without as the door handle jiggled uselessly and the frantic pounding continued. “Let me in, let me in, let me in!”

Some of the tension eased out of Ocell’s small frame as a look of recognition flooded her features, and she rolled her eyes as she hurried to open the door. Miratge stayed where he was, though, two calloused fingers braced protectively against the table near the row of gears. Tercer hadn’t lowered his gun.

But in spite of their obvious unease, Ocell wrenched the door open and a tall figure spilled inelegantly across the threshold. He seemed to know what he was about in spite of his apparent lack of grace, because even from his sprawled position on the floor he managed to quickly twist around and kick the door shut beyond him – narrowly avoiding trapping Ocell’s fingers in the process.

“Watch out!” she cried indignantly, aiming an annoyed kick at his shin while he scrambled to his feet again. “What in the name of heaven is your problem?”

“ _That_ ,” he announced grimly, panting a little as he gestured towards the window. The glass was grimy and warped and somewhat opaque, but it wasn’t hard to make out the ghostly faces which were pressed silently against the little square of light. “Border’s crawlin’ with them – I ain’t ever seen so many at one time. An’ a whole pack of ‘em have been tailing me since the station.”

“Afraid of darklings now, are you, Guin?” Ocell teased, but Miratge noticed that she had thrown the lock on the door again and was being careful not to stray too close to the window and its shadowy collection of arms and splayed fingers. Warped as the forms were, they stood now like a forest of dead, silent trees, swaying a little in a temporal breeze they alone could feel.

“These darklings ain’t normal,” the man protested, holding up his left arm for their inspection. The sturdy leather fabric of his black duster had been clawed to gaping shreds along the forearm: three uneven gashes that slashed down through the shirt and had rent open his now bloody skin. “Apparently, they started attacking people about an hour ago; no one has any idea what to do about it. But they’re all over the place, forcing their way into shops an’ houses, an – oh bloody hell, you’ve let one in!” He sprung back a reflexive step, looking directly at Miratge.

Ocell released a gasped breath in an annoyed whoosh and slapped his uninjured arm hard. “Don’t frighten me like that, you fool! That’s not a ghost – he’s a _customer_.” The expression on Guin’s face was puzzled a moment, and he opened his mouth to make a retort. But then he thought better of it.

“Ah. Right. My apologies, sir – not used to seeing customers at our dinner table.” He threw Ocell a questioning look, but all she muttered in response, mostly to herself, as she moved off in search of the first-aid kit was; “’Our’ table? Ha!”

Guin ignored this as he awkwardly shrugged out of his coat and draped it over the back of her abandoned chair, along with the wide-brimmed hat he had been wearing. In all the commotion with the ghosts, Miratge hadn’t noticed that the dark outerwear was dusted with melting snow. “Practically blizzard conditions in the Northern quadrant,” he explained when he caught Miratge looking, sighing as he peeled off his damp leather gloves. “Another refugee train. You’d think they wouldn’t be allowed in, what with all the commotion, but I don’t believe our queen thought that far ahead. Their memories are running riot almost as bad as the ghosts are. It’s a bloody mess. I’m Guin Hivern, by the way.” He held out a hand for Miratge to shake, and his skin was covered in an intricate pattern of swirling, faded tattoos. Guin’s grip was firm, but brief – a strong personality with no desire to be caught.

“Miratge. It’s a pleasure.” Miratge took a moment to study him as he settled into the chair. Guin was tired and grimy with long travel, dark circles shadowing his feline-green eyes and sweat matting his curly, dusky brown hair to his head. But he was younger than Miratge had been anticipating – somewhere between Ocell and Tercer’s age, and at least a few years younger than himself –extraordinarily handsome and possessing a con man’s patented charm. The scar bisecting his right eyebrow and the five o’clock shadow dusting his strong jawline gave him a pleasing edge; his olive-colored skin, bright eyes, and the swirled tattoos around his wrists and hands, exoticism and mystery. He was everything Miratge could have hoped for. He just hoped now that it wasn’t all for show.

“So what have we got here, then?” Guin asked curiously, looking over the map still spread out across the table. He seemed oblivious to Miratge’s scrutiny, in the same way that he ignored Ocell when she returned and began gingerly peeling bits of his tattered sleeve out his open wounds. “This is the old TB hospital in the southern quadrant, ain’t it?”

“It is,” Miratge offered, impressed in spite of himself. He tapped the closest gear and launched into the same simplified explanation he’d given Ocell earlier. Guin listened intently without interrupting while Ocell continued to doctor his injury. 

“I don’t see why it can’t be done,” he mused once Miratge had finished. “Seems straightforward enough. Only thing that worries me is your timing. City’s a powder keg right now, friend. Doesn’t strike me as the best moment to be doing something questionably legal.”

“Can’t be helped. Timing is rather more crucial than you think in this. So are you willing to make the attempt anyway, or are you not?”

Guin was silent for a long moment while he frowned at the map, and then he tilted his head back slightly to make brief eye-contact with Tercer. “Hmm. Need to talk it over with my team in private first,” he said finally. “I’d ask you to step outside a moment, but given the circumstances …” He glanced over his shoulder at the window, where the dead forest was still swaying eerily against the glass. “… Maybe we’d best just drink on it together for a bit.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I should go. The darklings do not trouble me.” Miratge worked open the puzzle box from inside his pocket and withdrew it fully extended so that he could very carefully put away the gears. For some reason he couldn’t quite place, he didn’t want Guin to see it a moment longer than was strictly necessary. “I shall return tomorrow for your answer. Should you agree to take the job, we can discuss payment and the particulars of the assignment then.”

“Miratge, I really do not mind you staying here awhile,” Ocell offered as she watched him fold up the map. “The darklings have never behaved like this before; who knows what they’ll do? We may be strangers, but I would not knowingly condemn anyone to that.” She shuddered, pointedly not looking at the window.

“You are kind, Miss Meccina, and I do appreciate the offer. But there is a great deal more that I must accomplish tonight. Thank you for hearing my proposal.” Supplies now collected, he stood and pushed his chair in, listening to the sound of Tercer cocking his gun again. None of them were overly keen on opening the door and tempting fate for a second time, it seemed. But he remained stoic in the face of their obvious concern, simply nodding his thanks and then crossing to the threshold. “Until tomorrow, then,” he said quietly to them all, sliding the lock back and opening the door.

Night had fallen since his arrival, the crisp, chilled night of deep autumn, smelling sweetly of dead leaves and rotting earth. Only the moon and the stars, magnificent out here on the outskirts, illuminated the ghosts’ white faces, all in varying degrees of decay. They had flooded the scrap yard like a disorganized army, and every pale face turned towards him as he stepped out into the darkness.

He said nothing. Unsurprisingly, neither did they. He only nodded once at the assembled throng, curt and cold. They nodded back, and then, silently, stepped aside and allowed him to pass.

. . . . . . . . . .

It was dangerous to ever take anything for granted here, but there were still some things which never changed. The stars would always spin in their slow, inexorable orbits; the rain would always fall. And the scullery maid responsible for closing the kitchen window at night would never, ever remember to secure the latch.  
He had always loved the scent of the gardens at eventide, especially in the fall. The smell of decaying leaves and soil about to sleep beneath a diamond blanket of frost mingled sharply with the lighter aromas of exotic blossoms from warmer, far-away climes – life and death threaded intricately together, coloring the charcoaled darkness. But tonight, the smell just gave him a feeling of vertigo.

Everything else about this excursion was certainly dreamlike enough. In the interest of silence, he had removed his boots and now crept barefoot across the lawn, damp blades of frosty grass clinging to his calloused heels and the spaces between his toes. It wasn’t long before the chill had stolen all the heat away from his numbed feet entirely. Unable to feel the ground any longer, it was like he was floating across it: blades bending beneath mere air, as insubstantial and ethereal as the ghosts which occasionally peered out at him from the hedge line.

Coming here at all was an enormous risk, the threat of which made his heart pound hard enough to vibrate his ribcage. Still, this was not an assignment he would have entrusted to anyone else. And when he finally jammed his cold, gloveless fingers beneath the peeling windowsill and lifted it upward without any obstructions, it felt like some kind of affirmation.

The kitchens were dark, of course, domesticity sharpened into something sinister by midnight’s brooding shadows, but he didn’t need the stars or the pregnant harvest moon to navigate the labyrinthine pathways. He paused only long enough at the first sink to steal a tea-towel and wipe his feet dry, lest his dew-streaked footprints betray all his careful stealth in the end.

Ducking through the doorway was much more difficult than climbing through the window had been, because though the kitchens were regulated by the outside world – the rhythms of the growing seasons, the patterns of external deliveries – there was no telling what time it would be in the hallway. He could very well walk out of the sheltering arms of night directly into the glaring exposure of high noon.  
Still, there was nothing for it. Sucking in a deep, tight breath, ever aware of the weight of the revolver pressing against his thigh, he pushed open the latchless door and slipped silently into the corridor.

It was as he had feared. Bright sunlight dappled the autumn-cool tiles beneath his feet, adding pale, wavering dimensions to the checkered squares, and occasionally he caught the low, sleepy trill of late-season birdsong drifting in from the courtyard visible across the hall. But there was no one there; not even the whisper of distant footfalls. _Meditation_ , Miratge realized, slowly expelling a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Luck was with him after all. He had anywhere between an hour and five minutes before the hallway was teeming with life again, but that didn’t matter. All he needed to do was get to the supply closet at the end of the corridor unopposed. After that, the rest would see to itself.

At least, he thought that was where the supply closet was.

When he’d been a child, there hadn’t been a single inch of this place that was unfamiliar to him. But that had been many years ago. It had been a long time since he’d wondered this path, and memories were fickle: time had always been able to steal them away, even without the City’s assistance. The rock candy hidden in the hollow space beneath a loose stone in the garden-side window seat had been lost to the memory of a sand wolf’s fangs tearing through the tendons in his fingers; the ledge just beneath the stairs, a mere left-hand turn from the intersection he was approaching, had always been the perfect size for a boy hiding from his irritated tutors, sun-warmed for napping and well-lit enough for reading, but it was now buried somewhere beneath the fluid, seven-step process for reloading his revolver. Still, physical memory was often stronger. He caught himself automatically skimming his fingertips on the cornerstone of the wall as he rounded the bend, already worn smooth over the years by the touch of his (smaller) fingers, even if he could not recall why. And even though the door to the supply closet had been cleverly wallpapered so as to vanish into its surroundings, there was still a flat, intricately-wrought door handle right where his fingers knew there to be.

The door at the back of the closet, concealed by shadows and a forest of mops and brooms and out-dated uniform coats, was more difficult to find, but it sprang open at the press of his hand without the aid of knobs or latches. And then he was slipping into the network of secret passages behind the walls, and the memory of those, at least, was as bright as the daylight he was now leaving behind.

There was a clock just inside the secret door. He couldn’t see its hands without the benefit of a lantern, but he could still feel them. He had been right about the hour, but it was fast dwindling; a mere ten minutes remained of it now. Carefully, least he fumble in the darkness, Miratge reached into his pockets and withdrew two gears which he had prepared for just such an occasion. Getting the back of the clock open was difficult, though nowhere near as difficult as finding and replacing the correct gears. But he had done this before. Time was random in this place. 

_Unless_.

He felt the extra hour go as the clock began ticking again, like something heavy and viscous and dark being peeled away from his bones. It hurt – horribly – but the pain was fleeting. 

And there were more important things to worry about.


End file.
